20 comments:

I can't figure out how all of your patients are so crazy. When I go to my neurologist (pretty big practice- I think there are like 10 doctors) everyone in the waiting room is slumped over in their chair. Makes me want to check their pulse or something. Can't imagine them making phone calls like that. Lol. Maybe that is all they can do though.

I just don't understand why people would call you on a SUNDAY, away from the office, and ask to change an appointment. Doesn't your answering service weed these people out????

Some of the area vet practices forward their calls to our ER, so people call asking about their pet, that is not even in our hospital, and get made when we cannot tell them anything. MY favorite was one guy that cussed us for not letting him pick up his dog from boarding....um, we don't *have* your dog, your vet does.

KateA,Your post reminded me of when I was in the VA hospital for a bypass. A friend called his sister who lived nearby asking for directions to the "Vet's Hospital in South Bay". She sent a Mapquest page to him that got him to a veterinary hospital in San Jose, lol!

Well, an 'unhappy' patient paged my colleague, a hospital pharmacist on-call, wanting to know why on earth is spermicidal jelly NOT AVAILABLE in Singapore pharmacies... This isn't just stupidity. It is blatant selfishness thinking that their very minor inconvenience in life deserves the attention of another, even on a weekday evening!

When patients leave a message on the office answering machine does it go directly to your pager during“off” hours or are these people really paging you for this kind of BS?

To echo others does the answering service page you for anything, or do the patients say it's a medical emergency OR do you give patients your pager number?

I have a doctor who has given me his pager number both numerical and text and wants me to use whenever needed. In fact, I left him a message at the office during the Business Day thinking he only wanted me to use it during off hours in an emergency. This was indeed an emergent situation!

When his nurse contacted him he told her to call me back and ask me to page him like I was instructed. He wasn't at all mean about the situation! In fact, he was as kind, sweet and concerned as could be and it only delayed me talking to him by 10 minutes.

I asked him about it, and he simply told me he doesn't give this info out to just anyone and he wants me to get used to reaching him via pager.

I always feel so badly doing so; but I will say it has come in VERY handy on a few occasions!

His office staff was shocked I even had this info. I am not sure how to react to all of this. I suppose as long as I don't page him to ask what he had for dinner I shouldn’t be bothered by his kindness. Any thoughts?

I have had patients give me their doctor's personal cell phone numbers to call about prescription issues. I don't think I'll ever get used to the concept of a doctor trusting a patient that much. On the other hand, I have had my sleep specialist give me his personal cell to call in the evening about test results he was going to review for me. He said "If I forget to call you about the test results, just call me at this number." I never had the nerve to call, but I'm sure others would have no problem doing so.

Uh oh. This sounds like the conversation I had with my neurologist just before I had the lobectomy. I thought he was a magic man - with my brain in his capable hands. Say - you're not really working out of New Jersey, are you?

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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